


The Web Between Branches

by Quivo (quivo)



Series: Scenes on a Darkened Path [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Coping, Fluff, Gen, Post-First War with Voldemort, Post-Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-03 20:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15826461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quivo/pseuds/Quivo
Summary: Lily never gave much thought to what she'd do after the war was over. Somehow, she muddles along.





	The Web Between Branches

**Author's Note:**

> Probably need to read _A Lily Growing Thorns_ to make much sense of this fic, if you haven't already.

Some several days after the end of the trials, on an early morning that was very nearly too fine, too sunny for November, Lily put aside her irrationally persistent dread of what might happen to her if she presumed to rely too much on the bare fact that the war was finally over. She dressed in the most muggle-feeling things she owned: a blouse, a pencil skirt and a frilly little scarf for her throat. Over all of it, she wore her sturdy brown wool coat, though she fingered the familiar material of James’ coat for a moment, just before she left.

She Apparated in the usual careful, meandering hops, although she didn’t need to. And might not ever need to again, with the way things were going, the way the Ministry had not proved at all content with taking only fines from those favoured scions of the twenty-eight that had dallied too publicly with You-Know-Who.

(She called Voldemort that now, to herself. She liked to imagine, sometimes, that hundreds of years from now, after the last few copies of certain books had disintegrated, or had simply just been laid down somewhere and forgot, curious historians would page through chance-found fragments of this year’s _Prophet_ and have no idea just _who_ they were all supposed to have known of.)

When she finally reached the right place, she staggered. She leaned against the wall to the side of the graveyard’s gate, sweating a little ( _too many bloody hops, and you knew it, you really_ really _need to ease up_ ). She could not, for a moment, bring herself to go in.

The quietness was what moved her, after what felt like at least a month’s worth of minutes spent leaning against the wall, her fingers picking at the rust on the nearest bit of the gate. Lily straightened. Squaring herself, she ducked through the already-open gate.

She still knew where the gravestone was. _In loving memory of Catherine and Thomas Evans_. Flat and simple, because there hadn’t been much left over in the estate, what with the house gone to ash. The funeral had been simple too, and well-enough attended that Lily had been one stiff, barely moving column of fear the whole way through, fear because she couldn’t see any possible reason why anyone that wanted to do her family harm wouldn’t choose that moment to do it. It’d have been the easiest thing to pop in halfway through the ceremony and just start laying about yourself, carving bloody chunks through the ranks of red-eyed, black-clothed muggles.

She’d always disliked the stark separation implied by that word, disliked it enough that she tried not to use it to describe people she knew, let alone think it about them. But after the dirt had gone in, after the holes were closed, Lily had scrubbed at her eyes and looked around at the last few lingerers, and thought, with awful clarity, that if she stayed among these muggles, she and they would all die together.

Lily had hugged her Aunt Celia, had let the older woman sob on her shoulder, and had said nothing to the tearful offer of a place for her to stay next summer, when she finished school. Lily had, after some long, hand-wringing moments, slid a note under Petunia’s resolutely shut door, the much-blotted parchment containing an apology (useless) and a warning to move away as far as possible (important). Lily had gone back to Hogwarts the very next day, waiting for hours at King’s Cross in terrifying silence, not knowing whether she would ever be able to go home to Cokeworth again. Not knowing whether she even should.

And yet, here she was, nearly three years later, alive and free. All while the bastard that had done this, that had cut at her world and kept on cutting, until it’d felt like there would be nothing left, well, now _he_ was in his own patch of ground. Probably with a smaller headstone, or perhaps no marker at all; the _Prophet_ had taken great relish in announcing the Ministry’s decision to assume control of the final disposition of the body.

It was an open question whether that had turned out to mean either cremation and a contemptuous fling into the North Sea, or being hacked apart and suspended in fluid for study by the Unspeakables; Alice and Sirius had both laid money on the former, and Remus on the latter. Though, in his opinion, Bagnold seemed more the sort to crib a bit from both ends, resolving the great question by ordering a cremation and then mixing the resulting ashes into the mulch for her garden.

 _Only if she wanted to grow the world’s worst flowers,_ Alice had said, shuddering theatrically. _Or give all her weeds the devil’s own staying power._

Shivering, Lily cleared away the dry grass and leaves that had settled on her parents’ headstone, then sat. It had seemed like a good idea to write and bring a letter, in addition to some of the hyacinths Sirius had brought by two days ago, the afternoon before the dinner he and Remus had hosted at their flat. Now, as she laid down the slightly wilted apology bouquet, she wondered what on earth she had been thinking.

That she was here, that she could be here, despite everything, should have been enough. The words she had, the words she’d struggled to write, none of them would reach her parents. Staring down at the letter she’d just drawn out of her pocket, she could not think of a single reason to open it.

So, rising slowly from her seat, Lily focused her will on the folded parchment in her hand, and set it alight, very carefully. “Mum, Dad,” she said, trying to ignore the way her voice shook. “I’m here. I’m still here.”

The white fire sputtered a bit, then dug in. In a matter of moments, all her words, all the half-raging, half-grieving things she’d thought to say to her parents had gone to ash. Once the fire winked out, she scattered the ash in a fine spray over the headstone, though it felt silly to do so, silly to think that somehow, burning the words, destroying them, would bring them closer to her parents than saying them.

 _They didn’t win,_ was the one of the last things she’d written down. _They didn’t get all they wanted._ Followed by: _I love you._

And then, though she’d known, even as she wrote it, that it likely would have made no difference, she had written: _I wish you’d had more of a chance._

Frank had been luckier than everyone else, that his death– his last, desperate action– had meant something, had somehow managed to shift whatever fiendish weight Voldemort had used to tilt the scales in his favour.

“Right,” Lily said, blinking hard, not daring just yet to reach up and wipe her eyes, since both her hands were still all over with ash. “That’s me off, then, for now.” And then, before she stepped away: “I’ll come back. I can, now, and I will.”

* * *

Sirius apologized in painful stages. The flowers and the stilted, ornately sealed note had been the first of it, followed by the dinner, and by then, Lily hadn’t the heart to try and tell him it was all moot, that _she_ , by all rights, should be the one grovelling, the one making up for misguided actions. It was easier, after that trip to her parents, to bear with the lingering guilt, the feeling that explaining everything to the others would make them look at her differently. That if they did, it would only be what she deserved.

For that reason, she was often the one to sit with Sirius, who had held up until halfway through Malfoy’s trial, and then suddenly, completely, disastrously stopped. He endured just long enough to put in for a two-week holiday, and then went over to Remus’ flat and more or less collapsed. He went out, if he did at all, mostly on Remus’ or Lily’s careful urging. He’d sit and eat and drink what you put in front of him, and though it wasn’t as if he never talked, never laughed anymore, it came far more sparingly.

So Lily sat with him and smiled for him, and held his shaking hand under the table. And when, one night, they were curled up together on the couch, with Alice and Neville long since left, and Remus having just blearily shuffled off to bed, when Sirius tightened his grip on her hand and cleared his throat, Lily only expected the usual.

The, ‘I’m sorry’. The murmured worry that James had been embellishing for his comfort, at that last moment, squeezing his hand and telling him not to worry about it, that he’d forgiven that daft spell a long time ago. Instead, it was, “I should just fucking say it.”

And then, as Lily blinked, and gripped Sirius’ hand a little harder, preparing to soothe him again, he said: “Rosier was right. That bastard was right, about Peter.”

Peter, who still hadn’t been caught. _Peter,_ Lily thought, her breath frozen, her heart beating hard, _whose name we don’t speak._

Sirius squeezed her hand even harder. “We went to his mum’s. She called us, you know. Called it in to the DMLE. Did I ever tell you?”

“No.”

There was a brief, tense pause. “He hadn’t told her to do that,” Sirius began, his intense gaze fixed on nothing. “He’d told her where he was going, and he’d told her to pass it on if anyone came by, if anyone asked, and he’d said he’d been there, when Voldemort…” Sirius swallowed. “But she was worried. She didn’t like the way he looked, as he left, and so she called in.”

He’d forgotten that he was holding her hand; his grip had eased, and he’d been gesturing a little with his other hand, restlessly, as always. Lily squeezed his hand to remind him, half because she didn’t want him too much in his head, and half because he’d stopped talking. “Go on. How did– I mean, what happened, when you…?”

“Naturally,” Sirius said, with the ghost of a smile, “when we got to the spot he’d told her about, there was no one there. Some tiny house with a barn, just, one of those tucked-away country places with no one for a mile around. The sort we used to hole up at, nothing moving. So Hayfew gets his wand out and starts trying a trace. He gets an Apparition trail, a signature back to London, right, and he gets all gung ho to be off after it.”

“Right.”

“And Samuels is, he’s not sure, he’s found another trail that might be going toward Bristol. So they’re arguing, they’re talking about if it’s safe at all to split up, Samuels is very much for that, and the whole time, I’m staring into space, still brooding a bit, and I find myself looking at the barn and thinking, ‘no. He’s in there.’”

Lily could barely breathe.

“It’s just what we used to do, isn’t it? What we’d all do, sometimes. Pop out, lay a trail or two to somewhere busy, pop back and hide. Risky, if it’s a large group following you, but if it’s just one or two people, and one of them’s not fucking Voldemort…”

“So,” Lily said, fighting back a reluctant, tearful smile, “so you told them.”

“Did more than that,” was the half-smiling answer. “I laid a barrier ward against Animagi.” When Lily gasped, his painful smile widened. “Yeah. You can’t imagine how much I caught it from Carver over that, for withholding vital information. He was all for knocking me back and getting me written up and charged for being unregistered.”

“But he didn’t,” Lily said, suddenly worried about what Sirius’ so-called holiday might have been meant to hide. “God, he didn’t, he didn’t suspend you?”

“He did make me take time off,” Sirius said, shifting guiltily. “Get my head straight. He said, and I’ll always remember this, he said he wasn’t only not writing me up because it’d be a black mark against the department, but because I’d already got what was coming to me, you see, for holding back.”

Lily blinked, hard, and reached out to fold his free, shaking hand into hers. “I’m sorry.”

Sirius shook his head, ignoring her, that awful smile coming up again. “Remember all those bruises I had, after? That was nearly all from one spell. That tricky little fucker tried to beat us all to death with the barn.” When Lily gasped again, he just leant back away from her, still smiling. “Yeah. And that was after his first _Avada Kedavra_ missed me.”

Lily shut her eyes, trying desperately not to see it, not to feel it, not to think about how that would have felt, being called to Mungo’s again to sit by yet another corpse. She only realized she was sobbing when she felt Sirius pull her close, when she felt herself shaking against him, almost in time with his own, shuddering breaths. “Why?” she finally said. “Why would he…”

Sirius shrugged. “I think he expected… no. I think he knew, that I’d– that anyone after him, any of our crowd, wasn’t going to be kind about it.”

“That’s bollocks,” Lily spat. “They, we wouldn’t all have _started_ with–”

“You might,” Sirius said, his tone grimly teasing, and so she pushed away from him, hard. “Hey, don’t just–”

“Don’t joke,” was all she could say, for a long, long moment. And then, some moments later: “Even I wouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t.”

“Because he’s our friend,” Sirius said. “And because it’s Alice’s right, what to do with him. That it?”

“He took enough from us,” Lily sobbed. “He almost took you too. That, that fucking bastard…”

“Lily, stop it,” Sirius said, his attempt at a comforting tone coming out almost ridiculously uneven. “He didn’t get me, I’m all right. You know, thanks to the, ah, mystical warning from your other fucking bastard old friend.”

That made her sob with nearly hysterical laughter. “Oh god, don’t even start,” she managed to get out. “You’ll have _me_ believing him too. Do you know, he didn’t even know it was Peter? Who, who handed out my fucking address to Voldemort?”

“What. What in the fuck?”

Sniffling, Lily wiped her eyes. “That’s how Evan said he found me in Devon,” she muttered. “He had a task, or some such rot, and he got handed the address.” When she saw that Sirius, his own tears paused for now, was watching her with a thoughtful frown, she shook her head at him, emphatically. “No. No, I’m not… I’m done with it. I’m glad that, that some of his bullshit wasn’t _all_ bullshit, and I’m glad you told me, but. I’m definitely done.”

Which, if it wasn’t entirely true, was something she certainly _wanted_ to be true, at that moment. So Sirius, taking the anvil-sized hint, nodded and drew her close and let her cry again, and did a good bit of sniffling himself.

And said, just before they both drifted off together, exhausted: “His mum begged me to bring him in alive.”

And then: “I thought I’d talk to him, first. I thought I’d give him at least that.”

* * *

After that, Sirius’ malaise improved somewhat, just as Lily’s ability to keep on coping utterly deserted her. She didn’t go to the general sentencing; for several days, she didn’t go anywhere at all but her back garden, and the sparse forest beyond.

Then, in the _Prophet_ , she saw that Severus had received what the paper called a light sentence: one month in Azkaban, the wizard prison. Which, to her reckoning, was perhaps the very lightest possible sentence; a month anywhere could be endured. So she got out of bed, unsteady on her feet, and she dashed off a letter to Alster & Merrywood to inquire about what the procedure was for making visits to someone in Azkaban.

She didn’t Floo Sirius to ask him, though it would have been much faster. She didn’t want to think too hard about why precisely she felt shy of asking him, when it was only Severus she planned on making time to see whenever she could.

The reply from her lawyers came in some few hours later, while she was elbow deep in scrubbing her largest cauldron, the one she’d left half full of her latest half-hearted try at improving her conditioner. Sorrel was the one that brought the letter, Sorrel having improved enough after her escape from service at Dunwoody to insist on doing such small tasks, and argue ferociously enough that Mimsy wrung her hands and despaired of doing anything to stop her.

“Mistress,” Sorrel said, in a soft, hoarse voice that was the closest she ever came to sounding deferential. “A letter has come for you from Mrs. Alster.”

“Thank you, Sorrel,” Lily said, without looking at her; there was a particularly stubborn film on the upper rim of the cauldron, a film she hadn’t yet been able to shift. “The other table is fine, just set it there, and I’ll– ugh. You’d think a steel cauldron would be easier to clean, but no…”

“Has Mistress tried a rolling boil?” Sorrel said, her tone very nearly accusing, her voice coming from a little closer by than before. When Lily looked at her, she shrank back a little, then stiffened in place, letter still in hand, drawing her small frame up as if in preparation for battle. “There are few stains that will withstand a long boil,” she said, admonishingly. “If Mistress wishes, Sorrel can begin one immediately.”

“It’ll take hours,” Lily groused, glaring back down at the soiled cauldron. “And this one’s so bloody huge, there’ll be no working around it, not seriously.” Sighing, she wiped her sweating forehead on a part of her arm that wasn’t yet all over soap and scrubbing paste. “Oh well. Should have known it’d take a bit to get all this ready to brew again. Mimsy?”

Mimsy popped in by the doorway to the lab, just before Lily could even finish calling out her name. “Yes, Mistress?” The dagger glance Sorrel sent her was enough to make anyone cringe a little, but Lily supposed Mimsy had had quite a lot of practice in weathering those glances by now. “You is wanting something done?”

“This cauldron needs a long boil, and I won’t be here the whole time to keep an eye on it. It isn’t urgent, but…”

“Mimsy perfectly understands,” Mimsy said, her tone repressively prim. “Miss _will_ be going out today, then?”

“Yes,” Lily said, already feeling tired at the idea, at the thought of having to dress up in robes– better robes, at any rate– and worry about how she looked, and return people’s too-solicitous nods and smiles. “Yes, I’ll be going out. Are we short in the kitchen, on anything?”

“Mistress does not need to worry about kitchen supplies,” Sorrel said, before Mimsy could so much as open her mouth to respond. “That is our duty.”

“I only meant,” Lily said, very carefully, “that I’m likely going to the apothecary, and that, while I’m there…” Christ, but she hated the process of washing off scrubbing paste. She was always so very tempted to rub in a way that would really not help, and it came off your skin very slowly. “Just write a list, will you? I know we’re short on dragon dung, but not much more than that, for the kitchen and the garden and so on.”

That got Sorrel to disappear on the spot, likely off after ink and quill and a fanatic accounting of all the household stores. Mimsy, drooping in place, directed her reproachful gaze at Lily for only a moment before drooping a little more, and starting forward. “Miss should not be encouraging her,” she muttered. “It’s a lucky thing little Dobby is so quiet; goodness only knows how run down she would be if he were trouble.”

“How is he doing?” Lily asked, for what felt like the fiftieth time. She’d only seen the young elf once or twice; he had seemed to be made of all eyes and ears, and had clung to Sorrel’s leg the whole time. “He’s not bored or anything, is he, when he’s with you in the garden?”

“Dobby is an easy child, Miss,” was Mimsy’s distracted response, from where she’d buried her head in the lower ingredient cupboard. “He is not bothering Mimsy, and– Miss, can we afford to make up more weedbane? We have two jars left, but with the state of the giant hogweed…”

“Oh, god, yes,” Lily said, now working on getting her right arm clean. “Dragon dung, weedbane makings, got it.”

In the end, it was almost an hour before Lily had time to look at her lawyers’ letter at all, what with she and Mimsy and a rather smug Sorrel traipsing up and down throughout the house, adding to their increasingly long to-do list. Dobby came along too, or rather, hid in a largeish plant pot Mimsy had left in the downstairs hallway in the ensuing bustle. He spied on their comings and goings for at least a full half hour before being discovered, and seemed simultaneously pleased and abashed when Lily stopped to heft the pot and was surprised to see Dobby’s head peering up out of it where there had only been emptiness before.

“Ssh,” Lily said, and covered him hastily with her arm and some of her sleeve. “You really shouldn’t be here. Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

Dobby butted his head against her arm, once, but made no other answer. He was quiet all the way back into the hidden room in the kitchen pantry. They’d expanded it somewhat, when Sorrel had come to realize that her room was displacing ingredients, and had fervently insisted on this travesty being corrected immediately. So now, instead of ducking a bit and edging in past flour and pasta and oil with her heavy burden, Lily simply tapped the pantry door with her foot and waited for the handle to change to the shiny blue one that would let them into the new room.

A rather tricky amount of both Arithmancy and Transfiguration had been involved, in making sure the wizard space they were adding would be unobtrusive, readily accessible and well ventilated. But Sirius, on determining that Lily had somehow acquired a couple escaped Malfoy elves, had cackled and happily set to managing it all, refusing to let her do more than a few calculations to help.

 _Do you know,_ he’d said, the other day, his tone brimming with anticipation, _just how much easier this’ll make keeping a straight face while he and his lawyers_ (the Malfoys had had the sheer gall to appeal his sentence before the Wizengamot) _go on and on about all the property Voldemort ‘stole’ from him?_ Some house elves had been included in the accounting, as a rather ominous notation of ‘no less than seven, but not more than ten elves bound to service, used and/or destroyed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’. _Now, how_ you’ll _explain your having a pair of them is your look-out, but hiding them? I do believe I owe Lucius that._

Dobby had a small, spindly bed that was half-crib, half-basket, and all twisty, leafy decoration. He struggled a bit, as she very carefully tipped him out of the plant pot and into her slightly aching arm. “Should have floated it,” she muttered to herself, and did float it down to the floor, once Dobby was in hand and she didn’t worry about dropping him. “Now, you, you’re going to stay in here and nap, till Mimsy comes back for you. All right?”

“Yes, miss,” was Dobby’s very quiet, very proper answer. But his gaze was darting about the room, and he picked at the side rail of his bed with his stubby little fingers, and looked rather transparently miserable once she’d set him down. “Dobby will be good.”

“Nap first,” Lily said, sternly. “But when I come back, if you _have_ had a nap, I’ll let you help me sort everything I bought. How’s that?”

Dobby nodded, but looked no less miserable.

“And,” Lily hastened to add, “and you can read me a story?” There was something quite perverse about how hopeful saying that made Dobby look, almost as if _she_ had just promised to read _him_ something. It warmed and stung her at the same time, even as she very carefully patted his head and let him pat her hand in return. “Now, sleep.”

“Yes, miss,” he mumbled, already drifting off. Probably, he’d been dozing while he hid in the plant pot, desperate to either learn how to do helpful things from watching them, or to find a task he could leap in and do as his own proper, elflike contribution. Lily still wasn’t sure quite how old he was. He was old enough to talk, a little, and seemed to understand everything said to him, which she would have said put him somewhere between three and six years old. But when it had been his turn to swear to the service of her line, he had stood pointedly apart from Sorrel and held out his little hand on his own, though it shook as Lily very gently cut his thumb for him.

Lily had hoped, entirely in vain, that such swearing would not be necessary. But she had seen the scandalized look on Sorrel’s face as she suggested doing without the vows, and had known not to push it. Had known not to even say there was no need for either Sorrel or Dobby to work. Sorrel had watched, with a narrowed, sceptical gaze, as Lily made ceremony of deeding the use of the kitchen and its pantry to Sorrel and Dobby both; Lily had been very glad of the Potter records book, whose weighty, elaborate binding and vague, half-heard whisperings had added an eldritch, formal touch to the whole affair.

 _It’s not right,_ she’d thought to herself, as Dobby swore, tremulously, to do all she asked of him, and to be of use to the Potter line so long as it stood. But she’d echoed him with the proper vows, anyway, because he and his mother would feel that much safer, that much more grounded, with all the usual vows said. “Sleep well,” Lily murmured, now, leaning in to adjust his tiny blanket, though she knew it didn’t need it. “I’ll see you later.”

She tiptoed out of the hidden room with the empty plant pot floating ahead of her, her mind full of angry, amorphous thoughts about just how on earth the house elf issue might ever be disentangled, when she couldn’t even stand strong enough to train one silly young elf out of the habit of insisting on being made to work. Then she remembered she hadn’t yet given her lawyers copies of the recently added pages in the Potter book, and was digging up the book from where it had been crammed in a corner of her potions lab when she remembered Mrs. Alster’s letter, and went looking for that too.

“‘Visits to Azkaban not recommended,’” Lily muttered, having found the letter crammed between the pages of _Decker’s Prudent Potion Purgation & Purification_. “…‘especially in case of those… elevated likelihood… unpleasant memories…’?” Lily frowned. “Well that’s not… oh! I can see him _today_? At the Ministry?”

“Miss,” Mimsy said, barrelling in through the ajar lab door, her tone utterly exasperated, “Miss, I is not finding him, he was among the cabbages when I was seeing him last, and now, he is just _gone_!”

“He’s asleep in the pantry room,” Lily said, now groping blindly for the pencil she was sure was in this drafted little drawer somewhere. “I put him down a minute ago. Do you have– I can’t find my pencil, and I need–”

“Mimsy will get it,” Mimsy said, and popped away to do just that. Lily had only time enough to mouth her brief, happy response to the letter twice before Mimsy had come back again, looking cross and holding up a rather sadly battered quill. “Miss _is_ still going to the apothecary today, I hope?”

“Oh, definitely,” Lily murmured, scribbling away. “I’m just going to do this visit first.”

* * *

In the end, she had to go to the apothecary first, because she took one look at the long list that Sorrel sternly presented and realized there was not a prayer of getting everything on it that day without giving the surly older woman that worked there time enough to pack it all. “Two hours?” that woman exclaimed, upon scanning the list. “My lady, no one’s _had_ any dragon dung for weeks on end. The edict’s gone, yes, but the first shipment from the preserve isn’t due until next Tuesday.”

“What I meant was, whatever you can get, in that time,” Lily said, horribly aware of the speculative way the young man dithering over by the herb shelves was now eyeing her. He looked vaguely familiar in the way most wizards did, after her years at Hogwarts, but not enough familiar to be worth more than a polite nod of acknowledgement as he’d shifted aside to allow her to peer at the herbs on offer. “If you can wrap all this up, as well as anything on the list that you do have–”

“Alright, alright,” the woman said, impatiently, eyeing the sad little bundle of herbs Lily had set down on the counter with disfavour. “General restocking, I suppose? Though if you are doing that, you’ll want marrow and all the usual eyes as well.”

“We’ve pulled up a good batch of marrow this year, actually. Why I left it off.”

“Huh,” was the unimpressed answer. “Well, if you find it too bitter to use, we are at least well-stocked with that. This is all on the account, then?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The woman sighed gustily. “Two hours,” she mumbled. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but I’d best be about it, now. If you want to add anything, just call out; my Joseph will note it down for you. Joseph? _Joseph!_ ” And she had hurried off through the open door in the low wall that separated the shop and the counter from the hazily shielded rooms behind. “…out front, immediately.”

Lily, already retreating from the counter, spared a brief, friendly nod for the frazzled-looking Joseph when he hurried up to the counter. She headed for the shop entrance immediately after, though she could see, out of the corner of her eye, that the young man was still watching her.

 _It’s nothing,_ she told herself, though her hand was already on her wand in her pocket, and the only thing she could think of as she walked out of the shop was how exposed she would be in the street. _See, he’s not even following you._

Even so, she didn’t Apparate to the Ministry right away; she strolled all the way back to the Leaky Cauldron’s back entrance, and then Apparated to Hampstead Heath first, just to settle her nerves. Then it was the now-familiar hop to an alley a few steps from the Ministry call box, and the usual cramped ride down to the quiet bustle of the Atrium.

 _Then_ it was several minutes of confusion at wand check, where the elderly wizard at that station dithered over whether it was proper to send her straight to the prisoners’ desk on the tenth floor, or whether it would be much more the thing to direct her up to the DMLE on the second floor to be cleared again for the visit her lawyers had assured her she would not need to schedule in advance. “I really don’t mind either way,” Lily said, for what felt like the fifth time, “and I’d much rather just get on with it. The DMLE, then?”

“Oh, but then your ladyship would be forced to wait,” the wizard said, as if that was the worst thing that could possibly happen. “Tuesdays are awful, simply awful for the amount of meetings in that department. If you’ll, if you’ll just sit a moment, there, Lady Potter, while I try to make contact with them…?”

Lily, faced with his anxious expression, couldn’t bring herself to insist on just taking a lift up to the second floor the way she’d always done on the few times she’d needed to see James at work. And then, with that thought weighing her down, it was all too easy to allow herself to be guided to a seat in the little alcove just past wand check, because if she didn’t have a reason to move slowly and and smile and remain calm, she knew she would burst into tears.

Heartened by her easy acquiescence, the wand check wizard bustled back to his station to set about scrawling out a note to send to the DMLE. Lily sat down, staring into nothing, keeping back her useless tears by sheer force of will.

 _You can cry all over Severus when you see him,_ she told herself. He’d hate it; the last time she’d seriously cried in front of him, it had been the end of the summer before fourth year, and she’d felt about as horrible as one could on one of her worse period days, when even her careful wandless charms and a double dose of Colleen’s Cordial weren’t enough to make her comfortable.

Severus has sat in the swing to her right, equally uncomfortable, awkwardly patting her shoulder as she sobbed and sobbed about how she wished she were at Hogwarts, how she hated pads, how unfair it was that she’d run out of her favourite pain potion just as this was starting. How she didn’t want to go back to Hogwarts now, really, but she had to, because running off half-trained would be worse.

Crying like that in front of him again wouldn’t precisely help. It would be perversely satisfying, seeing the guilt on Severus’ face– he’d not come to her parents’ funeral, or to James’, and she knew, just knew he would be thinking of it as he watched her weep in front of him, even if she lied and said she was just overwhelmed, she wasn’t crying about anything in particular, just all of it. All that had happened.

It wouldn’t help. No amount of tears, no amount of guilt that Severus could feel, no amount of hurt that Lily could inflict on anyone would bring James back. And yet, as Lily sat there, her hands trembling in her lap, she found herself full of the urge to do something, to do more than just sit and wait and eventually visit Severus, and forgive him.

When, instead of another stranger or a fluttering paper plane, the tall, familiar form of Robert Bailey issued forth from the lifts at the other end of the hall, Lily rose smoothly to her feet, already having made a cold-hearted decision. When he asked, his voice low and curious, who she would like to be visiting this afternoon, she didn’t only name Severus, or explain, just the way she’d planned, that they had grown up on the same street.

She also named Evan. And, when Bailey gave her a sidelong, questioning look, she said, very properly, in just the sort of forbidding tone that James had liked to mimic for her: “a visit is owed to Mr. Rosier.”

 _The passive voice is recommended for public discussion of the most formal family matters,_ Meyerley’s _Brief Guide to Proper Wizardly Etiquette_ had advised her, over and over again, as she read past the funerary rites, just out of needing something else to focus on. And though Robert Bailey was a muggleborn just like her, he had been long enough among purebloods to take his cue from her short, pointed answer.

“If you’ll follow me, then, Lady Potter…?

She followed him to the lifts, taking one down to the ninth floor, then downstairs, then through a heavily charmed stretch of corridor that tugged and whispered at her senses, all while playing tricks on her eyes and looking as if it might go on forever. The corridor ended abruptly and unnaturally, at a high, wide desk and a rusty gate that the Auror stationed there hurried to open for her.

“Thank you, Auror Yaxley,” Bailey said, to the rather scruffy-looking younger man, so Lily gave him an acknowledging nod, and hated, for a long, long moment, that she was now familiar enough with pureblood conventions that she knew what it meant when someone you already knew made a point of saying an unknown wizard’s name before you while that wizard was present. It wasn’t an introduction, as that wouldn’t be proper without her having asked for one, but it was a rapid, polite substitution for an informal introduction, entirely appropriate to the situation.

Christ, she even remembered that last little bit from _Wizardly Etiquette_. _Few more years of this,_ Lily thought, glumly, _and I’ll be able to quote_ everything _from that bloody book._

“Mr. Rosier first, still?” Bailey said, to her, once they were through the gate.

“Yes, thank you.”

The corridor widened past the gate, and, after a sharp turn, began to be lined with strange little landscapes on one side, and heavily charmed doors on the other. Probably, the doors led to cells; the landscapes, on the other hand, were something of a mystery. They didn’t feature anything that moved, other than trees and shrubs shivering in an unseen wind, and the effect was profoundly unsettling. Lily counted the landscapes automatically, wondering whether Azkaban would have them too.

Eventually, just after the seventeenth landscape, Bailey slowed, taking out his wand. “If you’ll stop a moment, my lady,” he said, and gestured for her to stand back. He flicked his wand through the movements of what looked like a very elaborate unlocking charm, splitting his attention between the eighteenth landscape– a small estate, the buildings and towering trees that filled it more shadow than form– and the door opposite it. “Visit for Mr. Rosier.”

The landscape stilled, and through it came the tinny sound of someone clearing their throat. “Clear to enter,” they said, and then coughed, and then the trees in the landscape began shifting again, pummelled by a silent wind.

“Nasty cold going round,” Bailey said, to Lily, as if he thought that was why she was staring at the painting. “I’m going to go in; if I don’t clear you to enter within the first ten minutes, my lady, I advise that you retreat to the desk and request assistance from Auror Yaxley.”

“Of course,” Lily said, though she knew that that was the very last thing she would do in that situation.

“If there isn’t time to retreat,” Bailey said, his expression faintly wry, his thoughts probably fixed on the unlikelihood of her running for help in the event of Rosier’s attempted escape, “I advise standing well away from the painting.”

When Lily nodded, already taking a step back, he turned toward the door, his expression becoming eager, his wand arm tensing. He opened it with a careful series of taps, then slipped in through what looked like a too-narrow gap between the door and the door jamb. The door shut with an ominous click; shivering, she found herself taking yet another step back, though she knew how unlikely it was that anything would happen, anything other than the awkward meeting she had so boldly, so _stupidly_ set up.

What was she going to even say to Evan? The truth, that she was glad, bitterly glad he was headed for Azkaban, if only so that she needn’t worry about how to react to him in public? That she still felt betrayed, and stupid for feeling so, and angry, and desperate, so desperate underneath it all, for something she couldn’t bear to name?

She managed, somehow, when Bailey finally opened the door again and called for her. All that boring blather from _Wizardly Etiquette_ was good for something; she looked calm, and she spoke to Evan calmly, about Sirius. She apologized, in what she was starting to think of as the dry, meaningless pureblood way, because she was still so angry, and she knew, from watching him, that it would hurt.

But: “I am honoured,” was all Evan said, in response, his tone so proper she wanted to strangle him. That he was at all wary of her, and not just being horribly polite, was entirely debatable. That he was careful to keep his hands relaxed and empty might have only been prompted by the looming presence of Auror Bailey. Chained to within an inch of his life, and still in the wrinkled shirt and breeches he had been arrested in, Evan managed to look only a little disarranged, as if his imprisonment was some sort of temporary inconvenience. “Was that all you wished to speak of, my lady?”

 _Damn you,_ she thought, and said, instead, a mild, careful “yes.” She couldn’t bear to look at him; she thought that if she looked at him for one more moment, she would break, and go to him, and humiliate herself by asking all sorts of useless things.

_Did you really see Sirius’ death?_

_Why didn’t you say anything about the life debts?_

_Why did you say you loved me?_

Only, he hadn’t done that last thing, not in those exact words. He’d asked to offer for her bloody hand in marriage, and _that_ , she knew, was not the same thing, not to a pureblood like him. “Good day, then,” she told him, not quite sure what she’d said before then, and then the whole travesty of a meeting was over, ending with her right where she should have been from the start, with a heavy cell door swinging shut between her and Evan Rosier.

Sirius had been so very careful when he apologized, never to outright say that she had been stupid to trust Evan with even the shadow of a relationship. He had never said it, and yet that had been implied. _You gave him what he wanted,_ he clearly thought, but had never, ever said. _That’s the only reason it worked, the only reason Rosier kept it all a secret._

“Snape next?” Bailey said, after a long, silent moment. “Not to rush you, my lady, but–”

“Sorry,” Lily said, shaking herself. “Let’s go on.”

* * *

She didn’t end up crying all over Severus, like she’d been half-meaning to. Instead, it was: “Lily,” he said hoarsely, disbelievingly. “You’re– you’re here.”

Seeing him hurt too, in a different way. He wasn’t much better dressed than Evan– Severus was robed, yes, but just as wrinkled, and though his face was politely blank, and his hands were steady beneath the weight of his chains, every instinct Lily had screamed that he was terrified.

“What,” she said, “you think I’d pass up the chance to say I told you so?” She didn’t manage to keep her voice from trembling, but she did manage a small, mean smile. “You should have listened to me, about your friends.”

Silence. Then: “yes, I should’ve.”

“Don’t _agree_ with me,” she snapped, unable to help it, unable to bear that careful, empty tone. “Don’t–” and then she stopped, because what point was there in screaming at him, when she couldn’t also put her hands on him, to give him the hard shake she’d been too hesitant, too afraid to try and give him years ago? “Well. At least it’s over, now, isn’t it?”

Severus stared at her, his expression still politely blank, his gaze nearly so. “It is,” he agreed, his voice still hoarse, but steady. “My thanks for the visit, my lady,” he added, in a low murmur. “My condolences–”

“Stuff it,” Lily was meanly, thoroughly pleased to say, because hearing him even begin to say that he was sorry for James’ death had started hot, blinding tears in her eyes. “Now’s your turn, you know, to say _you_ told me so.”

Naturally, Severus only stared at her for a moment, then looked down at his bound hands. “You’re all right,” he said, hoarsely. “So I can’t.”

“Bullshit,” she said, just to see him look back up at her, his eyes slightly narrowed, before he remembered himself and went distressingly blank-faced again. “Just utter bullshit,” she murmured again, because it was that or bursting into useless tears. _I’m not all right,_ she wanted to say, even though she knew he’d meant the other sense, the only sense of ‘alright’ that had reigned around here for the last two years, alright as in ‘alive’.

Silence stretched between them, heavy and awkward; she couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be better said over tea, over tea and custard creams, the both of them huddled at her kitchen table and very carefully not watching each other too closely in case one of them cried. “Well,” Lily said, straightening a bit, “you don’t look too bad yourself, so I’m off.” She would leave him in this horrid cell, this cell that he had earned. She hated it, but she squashed all that feeling and said, as calmly as she could: “See you in a month?”

Somehow, she’d imagined that her careful question would sail right past Severus, would only prompt an answering nod or some other form of polite, noncommittal murmur. Instead, it made him look at her, his gaze frightened and hopeful all at once, his lips thinning, as if he was struggling to keep from crying out.

In the end, his only answer was a curt, jerky nod, and as she edged backward, he wouldn’t look at her anymore, choosing to keep his gaze fixed on his bound hands rather than watch her leave. “Right, then,” Lily muttered, blinking hard, forcing herself to turn back to Auror Bailey. “My fervent thanks for your assistance, Auror Bailey.”

Bailey held the door open for her. “It’s been no trouble,” he assured her, as he went through the now familiar wand movements of locking the cell door. “Just another moment, my lady, and then I’ll escort you back to the entrance.”

‘To the entrance’ turned out to mean him dogging her steps all the way back up to the bloody Atrium, making meaningless small talk along the way. Lily, annoyed, made the shortest possible responses, and hoped she looked more preoccupied than angry, angry that he didn’t seem to think she could bloody well manage to find her way up some stairs and take a lift without his bloody help.

It was only at the last, as he waited with her in line for Floo powder– _damned if I’m Apparating again,_ she’d thought, as she made for the busy fireplaces– that she realized he wasn’t being overly solicitous because he thought she couldn’t find her way around, but because, well…

“James is still very much missed, among us,” Bailey said, his brown gaze sympathetic, and she even thought he meant it. But he was standing just a touch too close to her, his hand hovering near her arm, and Lily knew what _that_ meant. “If you need anything else–”

“I doubt I will, but thank you,” Lily said, politely. “If I do, I’ll be in touch.” _With Sirius,_ she thought, _who I’m fairly sure still isn’t the least bit interested in being a comfort to_ this _wilting war widow._ “Thank you again, Auror Bailey.”

Thankfully, he didn’t see fit to try and draw their goodbye out any longer, and simply bowed her off as she stepped toward the flames. “The Leaky Cauldron,” she called out, glad beyond anything to be off doing errands again.

* * *

That night, she cried herself to sleep. _I’m not all right,_ she thought. _I don’t know how I’ll ever feel all right again._

But, days later, she found herself struggling to keep back a smile as she watched Sorrel and Mimsy fuss over the proper placement of the fanged rosebush that had got too large to be confined to the corner behind the garden bench. Bundling up the thing so it was in a fit state to be moved without either wilting or catching a cold had already taken them an hour, mostly because Dobby had insisted on being allowed to help with tickling roots loose and wrapping the tightly furled upper buds in cheesecloth.

Now, as the bush squirmed in its new, hefty pot, Dobby was busy hoisting it this way and that, nudging it a few steps toward the new outer railing, or a few steps back.

“It’s not too heavy for him?” Lily had asked, alarmed, only to be told in no uncertain terms that any house elf worth their salt could lift many times their weight when properly trained, and that besides, it wasn’t the _weight_ of a thing that mattered, really. It was the will you had behind the movement you were commanding, and whether the thing you were trying to move wished to be moved. Which the rosebush did, having been crowded in that spot for so very long.

That the rosebush had never been bought, or even deliberately planted, and had in fact simply started sending up ordinary-looking shoots behind the bench around a year ago, seemed not to enter into the question of whether its wishes should be considered. It was in Mimsy’s garden, and so it would be properly placed– “just to the left of the railing post, just there, just set it down, Dobby, and be gentle.”

Dobby made a really good go at that, despite the rosebush wriggling alarmingly at the last. Lily covered her smile with a shaking hand, her wand at the ready just in case, but in the end, the heavy pot settled into place with a whisper of a thump, and Dobby, shivering from effort, or excitement, or some unholy mix of both, stood wide-eyed before the bush, flinching back as it gave one final, defiant-looking wriggle.

Then: “MISS!” Gosh, but his voice was piercingly loud, when he was excited, too excited to keep from rushing up to her and vibrating at her feet. “MISS, I IS–”

“Dobby, _manners_ ,” Sorrel said, but her scandalized tone seemed oddly lacking in force, and anyway she was nodding to herself in satisfaction as Mimsy began to strip away all the cheesecloth binding the rosebuds. “Your fingers, dear, be careful…”

“Miss,” Dobby said, in a very proper, but still rather loud whisper. “Miss, Dobby is– Dobby helped.”

Lily crouched down to pat him very gently on the shoulder. _I’m not all right,_ she thought, as she sat down on the raised stones that lined the nearest flowerbed, making sure not to cast too much shade on the spinach nearby. _But this really does help, to bear it._ “I saw,” she murmured. “I saw, Dobby.”

And then, because Sorrel and Mimsy were too busy trimming the branches of the rosebush to sigh over her spoiling him, Lily put her arm around Dobby and let him lean against her knee.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> And so we come to the first major stopping point in this universe. Hopefully you've enjoyed the ride so far ;) 
> 
> The big sequel to this and _A Lily Growing Thorns_ is still currently just about a chapter long, and will take at least three months to finish, or more if it turns out to be longer than ALGT. I won't be posting it as a true WIP because I just don't brain that way these days. Subscribing to this series in particular will be the best way to get notified when I start posting the big sequel.


End file.
